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This Special Issue of the Foreign Policy Review is dedicated to the MENARA project conducted in the H2020 framework of the European Union with the participation of fourteen institutions, led by the CIDOB in Barcelona. The MENARA (“lighthouse” in Arabic) – the acronym for the Middle East and North Africa Regional Architecture – studies the [...]

This report aims to provide an analysis of the interviews conducted in the scope of the MENARA Fact-Finding Missions. Each respondent was asked three questions: (1) Which traditional or new actors will shape the future of the Middle East and North Africa? Why? (2) In your opinion, what are the three main risks and the [...]

On 15 November 2018, the Center for Public Policy and Democracy Studies (PODEM)2 hosted a stakeholders’ meeting in Istanbul with twenty-nine participants, including academics, experts, and representatives from civil society and international humanitarian and development organizations from Europe and the MENA region, as part of the Middle East North Africa Regional Architecture Project (MENARA).3 Through [...]

A number of 139 experts and researchers from different institutes and organizations were invited to participate at the Online Real-Time Delphi Survey (RTD) about possible and likely futures of the MENA region. The experts have been chosen due to their verifiable high expertise in specific areas and topics on the MENA region. All invitees received [...]

The place and role of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the international system can be understood and analysed as a set of asymmetrical relationships with distinct dynamics. The external environment affects the security, political, economic and social developments in the MENA region, while these not only interact with but often shape the [...]

The political order in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has seen a number of transformations since the uprisings in 2011. Local, national, regional and international patterns of order and cooperation have been reversed, undermined or reformed and have re-emerged in new shapes and constellations. The present policy brief focuses on the changes [...]

As part of the MENARA project, the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut (IFI – AUB) organized a focus group in Beirut (Lebanon) on 2 November 2018 with twelve scholars, experts, civil society leaders and activists from Lebanon and the Arab Middle East. It should be [...]

On 22 June 2018, a group of experts including members of the Brussels-based think thanks, Belgian diplomats, EU policy advisers and academics met at the Egmont Institute on the latter’s invitation to discuss salient issues related to the geopolitical order in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), which is the core topic analysed by [...]

As part of the MENARA project, Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane (AUI) organized a focus group in Rabat (Morocco) on 11 July 2018 with various scholars and experts from the Maghreb and those working in the region. The discussions were linked to the general aims of the MENARA project (to characterize the regional order, define scenarios [...]

This article explores the impact of the US foreign policy’s predictability, or lack thereof, vis-à-vis the Middle Easter regional order. It lays out two main arguments. Firstly, since 2003, the US has undertaken some concrete actions which have undermined former expectations of its behaviour among regional actors. By that, Washington distanced itself from open and [...]